CHEAP GERMAN SNEERS. Our Military Ardour.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 76, 14 December 1901, Page 8

CHEAP GERMAN SNEERS. Our Military Ardour.

THERE has been a recent recrudescence of the Anglophobia which afflicts the German press Possibly, its fitful character, now lapsing into comparative quiet, ude and anon rising into fierce transports, reflects the fluctuating state of the funds which the Boer emissaries on the Continent have at their disposal for subsidising the reptile press that plays the ignoble game of cursing Great Britain up hill and down dale So long as the money is forthcoming for this purpose just so long will this newspaper abuse be kept up • • • The latest device is to sneer at the colonies. They are credited with a disinclination to send more troops to South Africa, and England is told that she will find them a broken reed One paper, the "Vossische Zeitung," which from its standing, ought to be better informed, has the effrontery or the ignorance to declare that "the military ardour of the British colonies vanished when it became evident that the war was no nursery game " Nothing could be more grotesquely childish and more transparently false The military ardour of the colonies was and is equal to any sacrifice on behalf of the Empire * * * They sprang to arms by a common impulse as soon as war threatened, and before it broke out Their offers of men and money were ample and generous If all the young colonials who rushed forward to enlist had been accepted, industrial operations throughout the colonies would have been at a standstill As it was, the colonies pressed their Contingents upon the Mother-Country, and the supplies only stopped when she cried, "Hold, enough '"

Our young soldiers have been subjected to the stern test of war, and have come through the ordeal in a manner that has won the warmest praise of military experts from the Commander-m-Chief downwards Their deeds, their resolute bravery their martial spirit, grit, and endu - ance, are too well and too conclusively avouched to be called in question by the gutter journalism of Germany or any other country It was only when the power of the Boers was completely broken, and when all that remained was to hunt down and break up the guerilla bands that roved about m various directions that any of the colonial Contingents returned Home

The Imperial Government signified that it needed no further assists ance If it did, the slightest hint of such a want is sufficient to put the war fever into the veins of the colonies once again Canada has just given the world an object-lesson of their feeling and attitude m pressing unasked upon the Imperial Government another Contingent of 900 men. Let the Germans mawe no mistake The manhood of these free lands is made of sterner stuff than to look upon wai as a nursery game, or to play the part of carpet soldiers They are sprung from a stock that has always held its own and will do so to the end * • • Othei nations may have to apply the screw of the conscription to pi ocure their armies. Great Britain needs no artificial aids of that kind Whenever the war-drums beat, and the foe threatens, her sons will rally to the flag the wide-world over and dare any enterprise for her sake All this Great Britain's neighbours know perfectly well. and. German sneeis to the contraiy the Boei wai has taught them that when she goes forth to battle in the future it will be with the solid strength and the indomitable spirit of an Empire which is sound m its allegiance from centre to circumference The colonies will be no broken reed but a sine and certain help m the day of emergency.